


a friend (i hope that’s what you’ve come to be)

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But also, F/M, Missing Scene, One Shot, and the quadrangle never becomes a thing, in a universe where josh and greg get their due diligence, this is set after season 4 episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-25 23:16:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18711679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: “If we talk more about why you did it, it’ll be like opening that door and letting you inside all over again.”Rebecca follows up with Nathaniel after visiting him in the middle of the night. Post-4.12.





	a friend (i hope that’s what you’ve come to be)

**Author's Note:**

> For alternate versions of how this talk might have gone, you can look [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17865176) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310068/chapters/42993608).
> 
> Thanks for reading this over, Bethany!

Rebecca should be asleep by now. Between her talk with Greg, the new meds, and trying to be indispensable to Paula while she’s in the hospital, she’s certainly exhausted enough, and she’s been telling everyone how she was going to pass out for a week all day.

So why can’t she just relax?

The answer is within easy reach and, with an agitated grunt, she snatches her phone off her nightstand.

She has a couple unread texts from a bored Valencia, who’s still at the hospital. Instead of answering them, though, she scrolls through her message threads until she gets to Nathaniel.

She flushes hot with chagrin but doesn’t let the sting stop her from typing out the message: _So we should touch base, probably._

The response comes quick: _It’s fine._

She rolls her eyes and messages back, _It’s really not. When are you available to talk?_

Nathaniel: _Honestly, I don’t need to hear the particulars. I’ve already forgiven you._

Rebecca: _Who said I was going to apologize?_

Nathaniel: _Oh._

Rebecca: _Dude, I’m kidding. But now do you want to talk about it?_

Nathaniel: _You say you’re kidding, but I’m starting to buy the shameless act._

Hearing his skepticism in her head, Rebecca grins at the message.

_Talk to me to find out if I am or not._

_Shameless, that is._

Seconds after she sends the second message, her phone vibrates with a call.

“It just seems unnecessary and, I don’t know, dangerous,” Nathaniel says as soon as she answers.

“Dangerous?” she asks, teasing just a little.

“Yeah,” he says, and then falls silent.

She’s about to ask if he’s still there when he continues.

“If we talk more about why you did it, it’ll be like opening that door and letting you inside all over again.”

All the playfulness drains out of her then. She’s left only with her exhaustion.

“You’re right. If you don’t want to open the door, I can’t force it open. I _shouldn’t_ force it open.”

“Okay.”

“Right.”

A beat, and then, “Ah, to hell with it. Let’s talk.”

“Nathaniel, no,” Rebecca says. “No. You should listen to your gut when it’s telling you something is bad for you.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and she holds her breath waiting for his reply. “Might be a refreshing change of pace, huh?”

“Something like that,” she says on an exhale.

“I guess we did it, then. We touched base.”

“Yay, maturity,” she says weakly.

Nathaniel laughs.

“Okay,” she says, and when he doesn’t respond or hang up, she adds, “Enjoy the rest of your evening, I guess.”

“Right. Yes. You, too.”

Rebecca rolls over after the call disconnects, squeezing her eyes shut against the setting sun filtering into the room and willing the sickly restlessness to stop gurgling in her stomach long enough for her to fall asleep.

Twenty minutes later, when her phone buzzes again, she still hasn’t managed to banish it.

The text from Nathaniel reads: _What if I’ve maturely mulled things over, and I still decide I want to talk?_

She sets her phone down on her comforter and bites her lip, weighing the tempting spark of hope against, well, everything else.

With a deep breath, she picks up the phone and texts back: _I’d like that_.

Nathaniel: _Now or…?_

This time she doesn’t think about it, just types: _Yeah. Come over._

###

The sun is all but set by the time Nathaniel knocks on the door to her bedroom, a flaxen light leaving the whole room looking leeched of its color.

“The key’s on top of the hose…holder…thing,” Rebecca says, barely managing to lift her head from her pillow. There’s no way she’s getting out of bed to open the door.

Moments later, he’s stepping tentatively inside.

“Hey,” she says, feeling the leap of her heart like an _I told you so_ from that discerning voice she used to be much better at ignoring.

“Hey,” he says, with a tense but friendly smile. He jolts a second later, like he’s just caught himself doing something he’ll be scolded for, and glances around the room. “I, uh, brought you some protein shakes.”

“Okay.” She cocks her head at him. “Why?”

He laughs—a nervous almost-shout—and says, “I know Paula’s in the hospital, and I figured you’d be burning the candle at both ends trying to be there for her. So these,” he holds up the six pack of bottles and pats it, “will help keep your energy up.”

A smile tickles at her cheeks. “Oh, well, I have been pretty tired lately.”

“I can see that,” he says.

“I guess that’s almost thoughtful.”

“Excuse me?” He jerks his chin up defiantly. “Almost?”

“Well, I am absolutely not going to drink those.”

His laugh is much more natural this time, and he ducks his head. “Of course. Should have guessed that.”

“I’m sure Josh would appreciate them, though.”

“Okay,” Nathaniel says, stepping forward to set the drinks on her nightstand. “Sure.”

He stands there for a moment, looking down at her. She watches him back, eyes catching the way his cheeks get darker even in the muted light.

“You can sit down if you want,” she says.

He raises his eyebrows at her, so she scoots over to the far side of the bed and pats the considerable space she’s left. “Safe as houses.”

With a sigh, Nathaniel perches on the edge, looking like he might bolt for the door any second. She supposes she deserves that.

“So,” she says.

He isn’t looking at her, but she can tell he’s listening from the way he’s holding his head, neck taut with tension.

“I have this tendency,” she says with a hefty sigh, “to put all my eggs in one basket, happiness-wise.”

That’s clearly not what he’s expecting her to say because he sneaks a quick glance at her face, eyebrows furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means that when I expect something to make me happy, I kinda go overboard. It’s, um, complicated,” she says with a wince, suddenly not sure she has the resilience to go through the whole sordid tale, nor the words to summarize.

“Isn’t that why I’m here?” Nathaniel asks, his voice gently prodding. “To hear about the complications?”

She picks at the wrinkles in her comforter. “I don’t know. Is it?”

He coughs. “More or less.”

“Well which is it?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you here for more or less?” she asks, pushing her head back to look up at him. “That’s an important distinction.”

He fumbles for words, his eyes falling to his lap. “Look, I know you’re with Greg, so it’s not as though I’m looking to—”

“I’m not.”

He pulls up short. “Not what?”

“Not with Greg. As of this morning, anyway.”

“Oh, um, because of…?”

She turns her head into her pillow. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Nathaniel _hmm_ s.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Rebecca says, and then rolls over suddenly so she doesn’t have to face him and his pitying-yet-hopeful sad eyes anymore. “It’s not really okay, but going in the opposite direction and saying I deserved it is a little too self-hating for the newly evolved me and, in wake of my behavior from a couple nights ago, I really want to prove to myself that I’m still her. The evolved Rebecca. Who can make good decisions.”

Nathaniel remains silent for a long moment, and then the bed’s shifting as he stands. She wonders briefly if he’s decided the explanation isn’t worth all this drama after all—the phrase being offered to her by the wounded Greg in her head adds a little salt to the wound—before the mattress dips with the weight of him lying down alongside her, careful not to touch.

“What are you doing?”

“Comforting you,” he says. “I think. Is this—I can move if you’d like?”

“No,” she says quickly. “No, this is good.”

“Okay,” he says, scooting forward until her back is resting against his chest.

“Okay,” Rebecca agrees, reaching behind her to grab his arm and pull it around her waist. They stay like that long enough that she loses her sense of time and lets her eyes drift closed. A second later, she forces them back open. “This is wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” Nathaniel asks in this soft, tiptoeing voice that fogs her chest with warmth.

She traces her finger along the curve of his wrist. “I’m here to be the comforter, not the comfortee.”

“I think,” he says, voice still inching itself around her fragile mood, “it’s possible that both of us can be both at the same time.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he replies.

A moment later, though, she says, “But I definitely owe you more of the comforting. So roll over.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me,” Rebecca says, already shifting, “roll over.”

He gives her a funny look, but she frowns sternly back until he does as he’s told.

With a grin, she throws her arm around his middle and presses her face into his warm shoulder.

He clears his throat. “So.”

“Right,” she responds, trying to smooth her smile away. This is serious and requires a certain modicum of thoughtfulness, after all. “Me and happiness.”

“Single egg, large basket.”

She huffs a laugh. “Right, okay. So when the basket, say, suddenly develops a huge gaping hole, I lose my egg. And without the egg, I start thinking: how will I feed myself? Like, you know how you can be totally unaware of your own hunger, but then someone mentions food and suddenly you’re starving? So there I am, starving and without means, and I panic and go to raid the egg store.”

“I think maybe we can drop the metaphor.”

“Really? Cause I was just finding my groove.”

“Oh, well, don’t let me keep you from your groove.”

She squeezes him closer. His responding grunt has her pressing her face even harder into his shoulder, trying to staunch her smile.

“Rebecca?”

“Right, right, right. So I’m at the egg store.”

“Of course.”

“But what I really need to do is learn how to bake myself bread or make pasta from scratch or, I don’t know, glaze doughnuts. Does that make sense?”

“I mean, not really,” he says. “Don’t two thirds of those foods also require eggs?”

“Well, sure. Because I’m still going to want eggs in my life. They just can’t be the only thing I rely on to give me sustenance.”

“And…Greg is the egg, right?”

Her stomach goes on an entire roller coaster ride between the thought that, no, Greg will probably never be eggs again—or at least not for a while—and the hurt in Nathaniel’s voice.

“Not exactly.”

He takes a deep breath at that, and Rebecca nestles closer to him.

“The egg,” she says into the fabric of his shirt, “is any guy I’d want to get romantically involved with.”

“So the other night—”

“I had not yet come to this conclusion,” she says, quick to hop in. “Or, I guess that’s not entirely true. Because I’ve come to this conclusion at least half a dozen times.”

“So what stops you?” he asks. “You know, from learning how to bake bread.”

She feels a twinge in her chest. “I happen to know some really enticing eggs.”

“Is that what…?” He trails off, starts again. “What are we doing here?”

“Comforting each other,” Rebecca says easily. “Platonically.”

“So I get to stay in the basket?”

“I’d like that.”

“Me, too. I think.”

“It’s okay if that changes,” she assures him, her heart splintering a little to do so. “I know I can be a lot.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Roll over.”

She laughs—a wet gurgling sound—and does what she’s told without protest.

Nathaniel tugs her tight against his chest and it’s fully dark in the room now, so Rebecca thinks her other senses are starting to compensate for that because she swears she can feel his heartbeat all around her.

He doesn’t say anything else for a long time, so she starts to give herself over to the exhaustion.

When she’s too far toward sleep to fully come back, but not so gone she can’t be stirred, he speaks again.

“Rebecca?”

“Hmm?”

“Was that really all it was—um, everything you said? Just raiding the…just raiding?”

“‘s a dangerous question,” she says.

“Deadly,” he agrees.

“It’s never just, Nathaniel. Should know that by now. Never just.”

“Yeah,” he says, and she sinks a little further into her exhaustion. “I really should.”

### 

She wakes—feeling both well-rested and like she could fall back asleep for another eight hours—to an empty bed and a note on her nightstand.

_Rebecca,_ it says in Nathaniel’s thick, cursive hand:

_Last night might not have been just about maturely touching base for me, as you helped me realize. I think I should take another few days before we see if there’s room for me in the basket._

_In the meantime, you deserve a smorgasbord._

_-N_

She sets the note aside, feeling unexpectedly buoyed. She’s even in the middle of googling how to make bread—it’s surprisingly simple, really—when her phone rings.

“Hey,” Heather says when she answers. “Where are you? We just got the news Paula’s getting discharged today.”

“Oh, really?” Rebecca asks, crawling out of bed and snagging the first pair of jeans she sees off her floor.

“I’m a free woman,” Paula yells in the background.

“I’m on my way,” Rebecca tells Heather. “And hey, maybe I’ll stop for doughnuts on the way in!”

“Yeaaaah,” Heather says, “maybe that’s not, like, the best choice in breakfasts for a woman who just finished having a heart attack. Just a thought.”

“We’ll go grocery shopping later and I’ll insist she buy a head of lettuce for lunch,” Rebecca says, trying to tug on her pants one-handed. “Problem solved.”

“That’s not how healthy eating works, like, at all.”

“Fine, then you guys look for a place that does brunch, and we’ll go out together so _you_ can tell Paula she can’t have breakfast pastries anymore.”

“We’re brunching?” Valencia’s suddenly the one talking into the phone. “Where?”

“Hello? Personal boundaries,” Heather says, voice close to the phone.

“I’ll be there soon,” Rebecca says over their squabbling.

Paula’s voice is the last thing that carries through the speaker before Rebecca ends the call: “Who cares what Heather says, bring me freedom doughnuts!”

Laughing, she scrambles out the door.


End file.
